Eckman, a trajectory analyst will be part of the “mechanics” of the mission – the people who are making sure the spacecraft is going where it needs to go and adjusting after it is already in the air. He works out of Houston, Texas.
“I always wanted to work specifically on moon missions,” Eckman said. “That’s what I came to NASA to do.”
NASA will try again Saturday to launch its new moon rocket on a test flight, after engine trouble halted the first countdown this week.
Managers said Tuesday they are changing fueling procedures to deal with the issue. A bad sensor also could be to blame for Monday’s scrapped launch, they noted.
The 322-foot (98-meter) rocket — the most powerful ever built by NASA — remains on its pad at Kennedy Space Center with an empty crew capsule on top.
The Space Launch System rocket will attempt to send the capsule around the moon and back. No one will be aboard, just three test dummies. If successful, it will be the first capsule to fly to the moon since NASA’s Apollo program 50 years ago.
Proceeding toward a Saturday launch will provide additional insight, even if the problem reappears and the countdown is halted again, said NASA’s rocket program manager, John Honeycutt. That’s better “than us sitting around scratching our heads, was it good enough or not.”
Eckman said his love of science was sparked as a kid, playing rockets with his sister. But growing up in Huber Heights, he said more people knew him as a music and theater kid than a science kid. He was active in marching band, theater and choir.
Eckman later got a minor in music from Purdue University, along with his degree in aerospace engineering. He said a NASA recruiter later told him that the music minor was part of what made his resume stand out from everyone else’s.
The other item that stood out on Eckman’s resume was his many volunteer hours at the Boonshoft Museum of Natural History, where he volunteered as part of his requirements for the National Honors Society.
Eckman said that was another valuable experience from his time in Dayton: learning how to multitask by running the projector and talking to the crowd while breaking down complex ideas,
“Back when I worked there, it was a much more difficult task to run the planetarium projector,” Eckman said. “You had to be able to talk smoothly to the crowd while also having to type commands in the computer at the same time and push buttons and adjusting.”
Eckman said learning how to code through a Wright State University class enrichment class in second grade a put him head of some of his peers later on.
Rebecca Wickes, a member of NASA’s public affairs unit, said Eckman was a good example of someone who took advantage of local programs – something NASA is now trying to promote in training the next workforce generation.
“The more that organizations can offer these programs, and these different educational opportunities, and the more that people hear about them, we’re able to build, you know, the next generation of spaceflight leaders,” Wickes said.
Once the first Artemis mission is launched, Eckman said he will move onto the next Artemis missions, which are expected to carry people to the moon. It’s another step in the journey to Mars, because many of the mechanics of getting a spacecraft into orbit and landing on another planet can be observed closer to home by going to the moon, instead of taking more than three years to get to Mars.
“There’s still a lot of logistical things that we need to figure out about actually going somewhere without being able to come back home or send them spare parts,” Eckman said. “And so a lot of that is technology that we want to test out going to the moon because the moon is right next door.”
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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